…needs some attention. Since the buff can be overwritten by two other class abilities, I feel it needs an additional passive buff for the Hunter.
The Death Knight’s Abomination’s Might talent and the Enhancement Shaman’s Unleashed Rage talent can overwrite TSA, thus rendering it as a wasted talent point. Of course there will be times when neither a Blood DK or Enhance Shaman will be in the raid party, or when you may be out of range of the buff. However, both of their class abilities also carry with them a passive bonus.
The tooltips are as follows:
Abomination’s Might Rank 2
Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 50% chance and your Death Strikes and Obliterates have a 100% chance to increase the attack power by 10% of raid members within 45 yards for 10 sec. Also increases your total Strength by 2%.
Unleashed Rage Rank 3
Increases your expertise by 9, and causes your critical hits with melee attacks to increase all party and raid members’ attack power by 10% if within 45 yards of the Shaman. Lasts 10 sec.
Trueshot Aura Rank 1
Increases the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 10%. Lasts until cancelled.
Death Knights gain an additional 2% more strength, which translates into roughly 30 extra strength or 60 more AP when raid buffed. That’s comparable, or even slightly better than an additional epic Jewelcrafter’s gem.
Enhancement Shaman receive 9 additional expertise, which translates into a 2.25% reduced chance for mobs to dodge or parry. The present expertise cap is 6.5%, so that 2.25% reduction breaks off a pretty decent chunk of that.
Hunters gain… uh… well… nothing.
If you’re in an actively raiding guild and you have your progression team(s) and assignments figured out, then this is not such a problem. As long as a Blood DK and/or Enhance Shammy is present in the group, then a MM Hunter could skip this talent. The point normally reserved for Trueshot Aura could be used for maybe Focused Aim, Improved Hunter’s Mark or possibly Rapid Recuperation for more mana efficiency. Any of those choices would result in a net DPS gain.
However, for more casual players that aren’t part of a tight knit raiding machine, you don’t really want to pass on Trueshot Aura as a MM Hunter. Not to mention there will be times when you’ll be out of the necessary 45 yard range required to receive the other two buffs. All I’m asking is that Blizzard take a look at that talent and give MM Hunters a reason to “need” it.
For instance:
Trueshot Aura Rank 1
Increases the Hunter’s critical strike chance with ranged attacks by 2%, and causes your ranged critical hits to increase the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 10%.
– or –
Trueshot Aura Rank 1
Increases the Hunter’s ranged attack power by 15%, and causes your ranged critical hits to increase the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 10%.
Another idea would be to merge Combat Experience with Trueshot Aura and give it two ranks. 1 pt = 2% agility and intellect + 5% attack power, 2 pts = 4% agil / 4% int / 10% AP. While it would be a little more proportionately overpowered than the DK and Shaman talents, it would be a tier 7 talent as opposed to 6.
Even another idea could be to make it a 3 point talent, eliminating Combat Experience and having it as follows:
Trueshot Aura: Increases the Hunter’s agility and intellect by 2/4/6%, and causes your ranged critical hits to increase the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 4/7/10%.
What do you guys think..? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions concerning Trueshot Aura and its lack of a passive buff for the Hunter? I think we’re getting hosed here somewhat.
Please chime in.
Right now, I feel trueshot is fine. Its a simple aur increase at one talent point, while blood DKs and enh shamans need to spend 2/3 talent points, and It won’t be on the entire fight no matter what. However, in 3.3.3, they will simply be a passive aura like ours, and thus makes trueshot aura just a less desirable talent, especially if you will always be raiding with an enh shaman or blood dk. However, it’s not good to rely on the fact your raid will have one, because PUGs aren’t gauranteed to have those classes. It would be nice to see a little self buff like 5-10% more RAP, but they would have to nerf another aspect of our mm tree so it balances out enough.
Garwulf,
This is something that I had never thought of I noticed it was kind of odd that they overrode each other as opposed to stack. It does make the talent point kind of wasted while those are two abilities are up. The other option is to make those abilities have a lower chance of being up.
For the DK, maybe drop the chances to 25% and 50%.
For the Shaman, drop the chance to 25% or 75% chance on a critical.
This would still mean the ability is up almost all the time but it would still make them less potent in non pve environments.
You’re probably on to something here and it would be a step towards bringing hunters on line with the other dps classes. Going the proc effect route would make its name inappropriate though since it is an aura. Aura’s by name are generally ongoing effects.
@ Gar
When I started leveling my warrior until level 70 (WOTLK was not out yet) I abandoned my hunter. I just LOVED the protection tree, the plate, the weapons… and I forgot my hunter under a pile of dust 😉
@ Stephen
When I switched over to MM for raiding, it took me a few weeks before I’d remember to consistently reactivate it after a wipe. Now granted it’s not that hard of a thing to do, but is it really necessary?
Maybe it could auto-activate once we have a ranged weapon equipped (which is 100% of the time), similar to how Kindred Spirits works, but with a gun/bow/x-bow instead of the pet. Just a thought.
@ Serith & Dalaila
Yea, let’s hope they fix the pet issues once and for all. I’d sure like to be able to put all of my pet’s DPS abilities in the castbar in favor of Growl and Cower.
and Dalaila… so little faith. 😉
@ Trackerbr
Yes. More stable slots are needed. I agree. More pets = more happiness.
@ Roarbeard
I like what they’re doing with Shaman in 3.2. How about a Hunter trap bar for the stock Blizz UI?
Hey Blaq. 😀
Good point. This would be the easiest and most sensible fix of all. Just give us a 15% TSA that we don’t have to manually activate and be done with it. I’d be happy and I bet the DKs and Shaman would too. 🙂
I think this is similar to the Battle Shout vs. Blessing of Might or Mana Spring Totem vs. Blessing of Wisdom. Ultimately, Blizzard had to increase the Blessing bonuses to be higher than that of the more temporary buffs to prevent overwriting. I think it’s more likely that they should do something similar here. Make the AP bonus higher to prevent being overwritten by the 10 sec proc buffs, that way people in range of Trueshot won’t be affected, but maybe those out of range can still pick up the temporary bonus if their in range of it.
I think blizz is trying. they are fixing shammies, after so freaking long of sucking (which by the way would be a great article to deal with on how the dynamics of hunter vs. shammy with change in the next patch), and maybe they are gonna start working down the line. I really hope they do.
My prediction: Garwulf will abandon his hunter in favor of a DK… 😉
Being new to marks I never really gave TSA that much thought, but I like where you’re going with this. It’s sad how many bugs blizz passes up… I know the pet thing has bothered me forever.
I only want just one thing from blizzard….. buy more pet slots for stable… Can you tell this ?????
I think trueshot aura should just be a passive ability too. Its tiresome having to switch it back on each time you die in a BG.
We still have autocast-bug on pet’s abilities. This and many other bugs have been pointed out millions of times and Blizz simply ignores them, doh. That’s why I stopped playing on PTR: I feel I’m just wasting my time scavenging bugs.
Yep.
i think the fact that class skills/buffs overwrite one another shows just how lazy blizz is with there coding. they need to make a (common sense team) to go through this game & fix lame.. long standing bugs badly =)